The Element Encyclopedia of 1000 Spells: A Concise Reference Book for the Magical Arts

The Dark of the Moon, those few days where the moon is not visible, just prior to the rebirth of the New Moon, is controversial. Some traditions will not cast spells during this period. Others, particularly those devoted to Dark Moon spirits like Hecate or Lilith, consider this a period of profound magical power which may be exploited as needed

In Arabic folk custom, it’s recommended that you keep an eye on moon phases. Whatever you find yourself doing at the moment when you first catch a glimpse of the brand new moon is the right thing for you to do.

Although it doesn’t eliminate the need to charge items with personal energy, exposing virtually all magical tools, charms, and preparations to the beams of the Full Moon provides enhanced magical empowerment.

In general, although not always, magic worked with the moon herself (rather than just by timing via the phases) is women’s magic. There is a trinity between the moon, women, the ocean and, by implication, all water. The moon is recognized as having a profound effect upon menstrual cycles and the tides. It is a reciprocal arrangement: since women have a natural affinity for the moon, they may more readily draw on its power.

In many cases lunar deities are female, with Artemis, Diana, Hecate, Selene, Lady Chang’o, and Ix Chel only a few of many examples. In other cases, particularly in ancient Egypt, the moon was perceived as male, but this perception was precisely because of the moon’s perceived influence on women. The moon was seen as playing a male role. To the Egyptians, the moon was male because it was demonstrated to have profound control over women’s fertility. It was believed that pregnancy could occur from exposure to moonbeams, and who else gets a woman pregnant but a man?

Drawing Down the Moon

This term is most familiar today as the title of Margot Adler’s influential book, and refers to specific Wiccan spiritual rites by which the Goddess is requested to enter the body of her priestess and speak through her. (Some traditions also possess a parallel Drawing Down the Sun ritual, which invokes the male energy of the god.) However, this is a very ancient term that predates modern Wicca and may refer to various other rites or practices, depending upon magical tradition, and most especially the process of creating moon-infused waters.

Moon-infused Waters

The ancient Greeks called this technique “drawing down the moon” or the “Thessalian Trick.” The Greeks believed that Thessalian witches held great power and metaphysical knowledge. This was considered one of their most important formulas.

This Chinese technique of drawing down the moon is used to create a magic mirror:

Lunar-charged Magic Mirror

A small round mirror is required, ideally one crafted from precious metals such as gold or silver and ornamented with auspicious symbols of protection and good fortune.

1 On the night of the Full Moon, hold the mirror so that it reflects the moon for a minimum of three hours.

2 When you feel that sufficient lunar energy has been absorbed, wrap the mirror in a protective fabric pouch. This mirror is now off limits to everyone but its owner. Although one person may prepare this mirror for another, once given, the mirror belongs to one person exclusively. The remaining steps of this spell must only be performed by the mirror’s owner.

3 For the next consecutive fifteen nights, reflect your face in the mirror over substantial blocks of time, so that the absorbed lunar power merges with your own. This is an interactive process, a sharing of essences: gazing into the mirror, you absorb the lunar gifts of radiance, beauty, psychic ability, and fertility, but the mirror simultaneously is imprinted with your personal power and desires.

4 When the fifteen-night period is complete, the mirror is considered charged and in harmony with the individual who owns it. It is now a profound magical tool for obtaining your wishes and desires.

To use the mirror repeat the initial ritual of drawing down the Full Moon, but now use the mirror as a direct communications device, a sort of personal hot line to the moon, to request gifts of love, marriage, psychic power, creative inspiration, personal fertility, or healing.

Spell-casting in Conjunction with the Power and Assistance of the Spirits

This style of spell-casting is unique. In other methods of spell-casting, the practitioner casts the entire spell from beginning to end. Spirit-oriented spells involve inducing, persuading, or coercing a powerful Spirit, usually a specialist in a field, to perform the magical action for you, on your behalf. Thus your spell is cast in order to persuade the Spirit to cast the crucial spell or create the needed magical energy transaction.

This area of magic veers dangerously close to religion and sometimes cannot be separated. In some cases, magical practices are what remain of what were once formal and sometimes very important religions. It is worth-while, when considering the permanence of modern religions, to recall that organized worship of Isis, for instance, was not limited to Egypt but eventually expanded further south in Africa, throughout Western Asia and into Europe as far as what is now modern London, and spanned a period of several thousand years.

Spirits worshipped in religion as “gods” and “goddesses” are incorporated into magic spells. There is a crucial distinction between magic and religion though: religion may involve devotion to and worship of these spiritual entities. Magic invariably requests a reciprocal, cooperative relationship, although it may be a relationship characterized by love, respect, and awe. Both spirit and human are perceived as having needs, which, ideally, are mutually fulfilled by a successful magic spell.

Ultimately the most potent, powerful magic derives from spiritual partnership, working with guardian and allied spirits. This is also for many the most challenging, hard to access and believe magic, because it doesn’t feel real to many people. It may be hard to believe or comprehend that a rock has a memory, but at least you can hold the rock in your hand. When you’re working with spirits, are you actually working with anything or is this all just the stuff of myth, fairy tale, and make-believe?

Discussions about finding the goddess within, although perhaps extremely valuable from a spiritual or therapeutic perspective, present a further magical obstacle. If the goddess (and, by projection, any other magic power) is truly an aspect of oneself, why bother with any of the physical materials at all? Magic spells are, in general, a partnership between inner and outer powers—powers that are part of you, and those that are distinctly independent from you.

Our limited word pool also compounds the problem. Because we approach spirituality literally, we also approach religion. Seemingly neutral simple terms like god and goddess are actually highly charged with personal meaning and resonance. We think that when we use these terms we are all on common ground, but that’s not necessarily so. Some use these terms to indicate supreme creators of the world; others use the terms for any type of spiritual entity. So to level the playing field, let’s just use the term spirits to name those powerful entities that resist human efforts to define them.

Like magic in general, every people, every culture on Earth, has at one time or another practiced some sort of spiritual interaction. Although it might be suggested today that someone claiming to have personal contact with spirits receive psychiatric counseling, at one time this was a common, if never commonplace, human experience.

Spiritual communications of all kinds, but especially the various methods of requesting spiritual participation in magic spells, exist in very consistent ways all around Earth.

If this seems unreal to you or if, based on religious background, you perceive that contact with spirits is potentially evil, there’s good news. Although this is a powerful form of magic, it’s easily avoided. Simply skip these spells and find others. Hoodoo, some of the most powerful magic of all, is practical magic devoid of spiritual encounters, as are many other systems. Work with what empowers you and makes you feel comfortable. On the other hand, if you are devoted to a spirit, you may incorporate spiritual petition into virtually every spell.

There is a host of spirits, legions. There are spirits to serve every purpose, and spirits with a vested interest in every topic. In addition to love spirits, protective spirits, healing spirits, etc., there are spirits of the bathroom, beer, and perfume. If something can be conceived, then there is at least one spirit attached to it.

Why do they assist us or even pay attention to us? For a variety of reasons, which ultimately may depend upon the nature of the particular spirit in question. Some are benevolent in general, some may have affection for you specifically; however the basic answer is because it is their job to do so. Dentists take care of teeth, doctors treat the ill, and spirits have their own department of expertise. It is thus important to petition the correct spirit for a specific purpose, although the spirits who work most consistently and powerfully for you are always your personal guardians and allies as well as your ancestral spirits.

One person’s guardian angel can be someone else’s demon: I Corinthians 10:20 describes Pagan sacrifices as being made to demons. The Pagans would have disagreed with that assessment. Many of the spirits invoked in magic may seem obscure today, however once upon a time they were huge stars of the spiritual firmament. The emergence of Christianity and Islam demoted many once-renowned spirits to the side-lines. This does not diminish their potential power. If you’re willing to believe that a spirit has the power to assist you, then that spirit should be treated with respect and consideration. Never underestimate the power of even the lowest-level spiritual entity. Furthermore, other spirits, depending upon spiritual tradition, are more vital and empowered today than ever before.

At best, this human/spirit alliance creates mutually beneficial relationships of great affection, love, and devotion. There is something of a barter relationship involved: we feed the spirits and they care for us, so that we may feed them more and they may care for us more. The key to this relationship, even more than any other kind of magic, is reciprocity. Make an offering when you make a request. Respond with an acknowledgement of thanks when the request is fulfilled, whether by prayer, gesture, or through a gift or offering. Spirits, like people, possess preferences. These practices stem back thousands of years; there’s a tremendous quantity of accumulated wisdom. It’s not necessary to figure everything out for yourself, although intuition may be divinely inspired.

Spirit Categories

Angels

Angel literally translates as “messenger” in Greek, a direct translation from the Hebrew. Unlike other categories of spirits, angels do not accept “offerings,” or at least not officially. They are customarily called through prayer, petition, and fragrance, although High Ritual Magic, based largely on information attributed to King Solomon, compels the presence of angels through sigils and talismans.

Specific angels maintain charge of all matters of life. There is an Angel of Conception, the Angel of Thieves, angels of various specific countries, and individual guardian angels. According to the Talmud, there are eleven thousand guardian angels per person. If you can think of it, it has a custodial agent.

In general, they are dynamic and fierce; creatures of light so blinding you can’t help but see them even with your eyes closed. According to Jewish mysticism, angels are beings of light, but when an angel wishes to manifest in physical form, it takes earth, fashions clothing from it, and transforms itself.

Angels are discussed before other spiritual entities because they are somewhat different from others, and because (according to Islamic and Jewish traditions), angels are personally responsible for humanity’s ability to cast spells. The Creator may have created magic power but angels taught people how to recognize it and what to do with it. They are our magical teachers.

Christian magic, reflecting theology, demands the existence of angels as creatures of pure goodness (with the exception of the fallen angels, who essentially lost their status as angels during the Fall), in clear opposition to demons, who are plainly “bad.” This is not the case in Islamic, Jewish, and Pagan perceptions, where angels are just beings of power. There are good angels, “evil angels,” and angels who may be persuaded to behave in either direction. Pious descriptions of “good” angels insist that they are asexual and gender-less, although ironically this is in opposition to the Bible, which describes the lust angels feel for human women (Genesis 6:1–4). Because these women conceive children, we can assume these particular angels to have been male with all working parts intact.

Instead of courting these human women with chocolates and roses, the angels bestowed the gift of knowledge—teaching the arts of astrology, magic, witchcraft, and cosmetics (not the triviality it may appear today but an ancient magical art). According to the Book of Enoch these teaching angels and their subjects included:

Semjaza: enchantments and root cutting

Armaros: the resolving of enchantment

Baraquiel: astrology

Kokabel: constellations

Ezequeel: knowledge of the clouds

Araquiel: earth signs

Shamsiel: sun signs

Sariel: the phases of the moon

Angels are ranked in various manners: Archangels, Throne Angels, Watchers, Seraphim, and Cherubim among others. The archangels command spirit hosts. Various spells request assistance from the archangels, however whether they are personally expected to appear or to delegate another from their host may be subject to interpretation.

There’s little agreement among experts or traditions, particularly as regards to the archangels. Are there seven or are there four? And which ones are they?

The standard four archangels are Rafael, Gabriel, Michael, and Auriel, also spelled Uriel or Ariel. That much, at least, is agreed upon in Christian, Islamic, and Jewish traditions, and probably pre-dates all three. But do they serve alone or are there really seven archangels, corresponding to the seven planets visible with the naked eye and to that magic number, seven? If that’s the case, who are the other three? Some possibilities include Cassiel/ Kafziel, Zadkiel, Samael, Chamuel, Jophiel, Raziel, Metatron, and Iblis. Even Lucifer makes it onto some lists, although obviously he loses his status after his Fall. (Most angels, but not all, have names ending with “-el,” El being the ancient pan-Semitic name for the Creator, literally “the Lord.”)